Let’s say, you hear two languages mixed in one sentence, like “我們今天來探討一下關於Interpretation的話題”. What do you do?
I used to be impressed with other interpreters who instantly flipped English to Mandarin and vice versa. But it later hit me, what did the audience end up hearing? English speakers would most likely scratch their heads at “Today let’s talk about 傳譯”. Right there, we just lost our actual audience. So, instead of trying to impress people who can speak both languages, let’s redirect our focus by the following rule:
- In any chunk of speech, if the speaker uses Mandarin, interpret it into English.
- In any chunk of speech, if the speaker switches to English
- Interpret it into Mandarin if you can.
- If you don’t know Mandarin, simply repeat the English. The speaker usually takes the hint and repeats it in Mandarin.
- If the speaker mixes both languages in his or her speech, then it depends:
- If the whole thing is mostly in one language, interpret it into the other language entirely.
- If it is roughly half and half, and this actually happens, remember our primary audience, and use their language entirely.
Whatever you do, don’t mix.